Novell Gets $5.75/Shr Cash Bid From Elliott Associates

By Eric Savitz

Investment firm Elliott Associates this afternoon offered to acquire Novell(NOVL) for $5.75 a share in cash, or about $1 billion net of Novell’s cash position. Long considered a potential takeover candidate, due in part to a cash position of about $1 billion, Novell is a long-time player in networking software, and also owns the Suse Linux business. Elliott and its affiliated own an 8.5% stake in the company.

In late trading, NOVL is up $1.43, or 30.1%, to $6.17, well above the bid price, which is not that surprising given the unsolicited nature of the offer. Effectively, Novell has now been put into play, and the Street thinks the ultimate purchase price could be higher.

I write to you on behalf of Elliott Associates, L.P. and Elliott International, L.P., which collectively own, or have an interest economically equivalent to, 8.5% of the common stock of Novell and are currently one of the Company’s largest stockholders. Elliott is a multi-strategy investment firm with over $16 billion in assets under management focused on employing detailed research to address complex investment situations.

Based on our detailed review of the Company’s publicly available information and our substantial knowledge of the software industry, we are pleased to submit this proposal to acquire all of the shares of common stock of Novell for a cash price of $5.75 per share. This price represents a premium of 49% over the Company’s current enterprise value and 77% over the Company’s 90-day volume-weighted average enterprise value.

As the Company’s cash balance of nearly $1.0 billion represents almost 60% of its current market capitalization, we believe that a premium to enterprise value represents the most meaningful measure of the value that our proposal offers stockholders, valuing the Company’s cash at 100 cents on the dollar despite the fact that a significant portion of that cash is overseas and may not be realized in a tax efficient manner.

Importantly, this price represents a premium of 115% over the Company’s enterprise value on January 4, 2010, the last trading day before we commenced actively acquiring Novell’s common stock. This price also represents a 37% premium to Novell’s closing stock price on January 4, 2010 and a 20% premium to Novell’s closing stock price yesterday. By any measure, we believe our proposal represents a compelling opportunity that your stockholders will find extremely attractive.

Novell is a long-established company that we have followed closely for a considerable period of time. Over the past several years, the Company has attempted to diversify away from its legacy division with a series of acquisitions and changes in strategic focus that have largely been unsuccessful. As a result, we believe the Company’s stock has meaningfully underperformed all relevant indices and peers. With over 33 years of experience in investing in public and private companies and an extensive track record of successfully structuring and executing acquisitions in the technology space, we believe that Elliott is uniquely situated to deliver maximum value to the Company’s stockholders on an expedited basis.

Our proposal is subject to a confirmatory due diligence review of the Company and negotiation of definitive documentation. We are available to sign an appropriate confidentiality agreement and commence our due diligence review immediately. Elliott is prepared to devote considerable resources to completing this transaction and we are confident that, with your cooperation, we will be in a position to execute a definitive transaction agreement on an expedited basis. While we intend to work with financing sources, obtaining financing is neither a condition of our proposal nor a condition to completing the transaction.

We are prepared to meet immediately with you and your advisors in order to answer any questions about our proposal and to work out the details for moving toward a definitive transaction agreement. We also look forward to discussing with management its role with us going forward.

Of course, nothing in this letter is intended to create a legally binding obligation and no such obligation will exist unless and until a definitive transaction agreement is executed. As a result of our substantial share ownership in Novell, SEC rules oblige us to make the existence and contents of this letter public. Please feel free to contact me at (212) 506-2999 to discuss or clarify any aspect of this proposal.

On behalf of Elliott, we are very much looking forward to working closely with the talented employees of Novell to bring the Company forward to its next phase of growth.

Very truly yours,

Jesse A. Cohn

Portfolio Manager

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